Overview
- The University of Bari published the Doginburgh Inventory in Royal Society Open Science in June 2026 as a standard method to assess canine paw preference.
- The protocol uses four simple tasks—two manipulation tests (Kong toy and food-reaching) and two stepping tests (stationary first step and dynamic first step)—to capture how dogs use their front paws.
- The inventory produces separate scores for direction and strength of lateralisation and classifies dogs into five categories from strong left to strong right.
- Initial data from 47 dogs showed tentative patterns, including a higher proportion of left-pawed males and no males with a strong right preference, but the authors stress these findings are preliminary.
- The team plans larger, more diverse studies to test age, breed and owner-handedness effects, and they say wider adoption of the tool could make research on behaviour and immune links more reliable and useful for training and health assessment.